Album comparison

Comparing of old and new John Mayer albums

For my corpus idea, I want to compare the older John Mayer albums to the newer John Mayer albums. The first thing I did here was compare the popularity of the tracks of all the albums. While comparing the popularity of the tracks, I also included some other features like loudness, mode, valence and energy. The next step is to look at the chroma and timbre features and to compare these to each other as well. I compared these features for three distinctive tracks of three distinctive John Mayer albums. The next thing I did is look at the tempo. To find out more about the differences in tempo, I made some tempograms, a scatterplot and tempo histograms. The next part in this research is the classification. With confusion matrices and a scatterplot, I will show which features are important for the distinguishment of the albums and how these can be distinguished. I will also show how the tracks on the albums will be clustered. The last part of my research is, of course, a conclusion in which I will show the differences and the similarities of the albums.

My goal here is mainly to try and find out if the older or newer albums of John Mayer are more popular, and if so, why these would be more popular. With all of the information about the different features and the visualisations, I hope to find an answer to these questions.

Album Year
Room For Squares 2001
Heavier Things 2003
Continuum 2006
Battle Studies 2009
Born and Raised 2012
Paradise Valley 2013
The Search for Everything 2017

Popularity

Most hits are on the album Continuum

These boxplots show the popularity of every John Mayer album. They show that the albums ‘Continuum’ and ‘The Search for Everything’ seem to contain the most popular tracks. However, it also shows that Continuum contains slightly more popular tracks than The Search for Everything, which is why, according to these boxplots, it can be said that Continuum is the most popular John Mayer album. This album is from the year 2006, which would mean that his older music is more popular than his newer music, however I do think that the success of this album does not have much to do with the oldness or newness, but more with the guitar skills and solos in the tracks of this album.

The biggest outlier is the track “Your Body Is a Wonderland”

This interactive scatterplot clearly shows all of the albums in different colors. Because of the different colors it is easy to see which albums seem to be more popular and which album contains most outliers for example. In this scatterplot, the valence is shown on the X-axis and the track popularity is shown on the Y-axis. The size of the dots in this scatterplot shows the energy. In this interactive scatterplot it can easily be seen that the biggest outlier in popularity is the track ‘Your Body Is a Wonderland’ on the album Room For Squares, which also is the oldest album in the scatterplot. The other three ouliers, however, are the tracks ‘Slow Dancing In A Burning Room’, ‘Gravity’, and ‘Waiting On the World to Change’, which are all on the album Continuum. Even though, these seem to be the most popular tracks, it does not show much about the valence or loudness for example. It seems that there is no real connection between the track popularity, the valence and/or the energy.

Chroma & timbre

Your Body Is a Wonderland, Slow Dancing in a Burning Room and In the Blood self-similarity matrices

These are three self-similarity matrices. The first self-similarity matrix is of the biggest outlier, Your Body Is a Wonderland. This self-similarity matrix shows one clear diagonal line. This line indicates the music in time. The next noticeable elements are the two yellow (horizontal and vertical) lines which form some kind of window pane. This indicates that something unexpected happens at this point in time. This means that the overall sound changes a lot, which can be linked to the end of the bridge in this track. The last element is actually not very noticeable in this self-similarity matrix. This element is the homogeneity and this should show different segments in the song that sound similar. This could be quite difficult to see, because more or less the whole song (except for the bridge) sounds pretty much the same.

The second self-similarity matrix shows the second most popular track, which is ‘Slow Dancing in a Burning Room’ from the album Continuum. The two biggest differences between the self-similarity matrix of Your Body Is a Wonderland and the self-similarity matrix of Slow Dancing in a Burning Room is that the change of sound (possibly the bridge) takes place earlier in Slow Dancing in a Burning Room and that the checkerboard pattern can be seen more clearly in the self-similarity matrix of Slow Dancing in a Burning Room, which would probably mean that there can be found more distinctive parts in this track.

The third self-similarity matrix shows the most popular track of the most recent album, which is ‘In the Blood’. The diagonal line shows the music unfolding in time. The more yellow (horizontal and vertical) lines, which appear somewhere between 150 and 200 seconds, mark a change in music. In this case it shows a small guitar solo or bridge in the song. The checkerboard pattern in this self-similarity matrix looks clearer compared to the other two self-similarity matrices. This pattern shows the homogeneity which means that it shows certain segments which sound similar. The checkerboard pattern therefore indicates that there can be found multiple similar sounding segments in this track, which is very understandable since the verses and choruses do not really seem to change much in this song.

Novelty function, chromagram and cepstrogram

Verse: 87-107 sec

Pre-chorus: 108-126 sec

Chorus: 127-143 sec

Bridge: 144-182 sec

These visualisations show a novelty function, a chromagram, and a timbre cepstrogram for the verse up until the end of the bridge. Since the novelty function is to show loudness, the peaks here show mainly how loud a part of the song is. What can be noticed about this novelty function is that the chorus actually has the smallest peaks. The verse already shows some more peaks, but the bridge shows even more than the verse. However, the most and also the highest peaks can be found after the bridge. This is quite remarkable, since this is nothing special in this song and it does not really seem to be that loud compared to the rest of the song. It is just a short intermezzo which builds up to the next chorus.

The chromagram and timbre cepstrogram do not show many important details about the structure and melody of this song. However, the chromagram does clearly show that the D (and in more detail, the D-minor chord) is very present in the bridge section. And the timbre cepstrogram shows that c02 and c04 seem to be most present in this part of the song.

Tempo

Variation in tempo for the first and most recent album

This visualisation shows the variation in tempo for the first album, Room For Squares, and the most recent album, The Search for Everything. The X-axis shows the mean tempo in beats per minute (bpm). The Y-axis shows the standard deviation of the tempo. The size of the points shows the duration of the song. The color shows which song belongs to which album. And the transparency shows the loudness of the songs in dBFS. It seems that the tracks on The Search for Everything are more clustered with some outliers on the X-axis and Y-axis, whereas the tracks on Room For Squares seem to be just a bit more divided, but with less obvious outliers. Besides this, it can be noticed that there isn’t that big of a difference for the duration of the tracks. The volume, however, does show more of a difference. The difference in volume between the two albums does not seem that big, but the difference between the tracks on Room For Squares seems to be a bit clearer.

Tempogram

These are six tempograms of three popular tracks of three distinct John Mayer albums. The first two tempograms are of the most popular track on the album Room For Squares, which is ‘Your Body Is a Wonderland’. The first tempogram shows two clear lines. One line seems to be between 180 and 200 bpm, and the other line seems to be somewhere between 370 and 390 bpm. The second tempogram shows one very clear line at about 95 bpm. The real tempo of this track is 94 bpm. This means that the tempograms actually seem to be quite precise. What can be noticed about the tempo of this track is that the tempo does not really seem to change. It stays the same the entire song.

The third and fourth tempograms are of the most popular track on the album Continuum, which is ‘Slow Dancing in a Burning Room’. The tempo of Slow Dancing in a Burning Room is 134 bpm, which can also be seen in these two tempograms. The third tempogram shows multiple clear lines, but the clearest line seems te be around 270 bpm, which is pretty accurate since the real bpm is about half of this shown tempo. The fourth tempogram shows a better representation of the tempo of this track. Something noticeable about this tempogram is that there seem to be two comparable moments where something different happens with the tempo. These small moments seem to be the beginning of the chorus where the backing vocals enter, which was also noticeable in the keygram and chordogram for example. Besides these moments, there is not much else to find about the changes in tempo for this track.

The fifth and sixth tempograms are of the most popular track on the album The Search for Everything, which is ‘In the Blood’. The fifth tempogram shows one clear line around 320 bpm. The sixth tempogram shows two lines, which could be a bit difficult to see. This is because these lines are somewhere around 80 bpm and 160 bpm. The real tempo of this track is 80 bpm, so these tempograms seem to be accurate as well. Since the two lines in the last tempogram can be a bit difficult to see, it is also quite difficult to see any real changes in the tempo. When listening to the song, there cannot be found a real change in the tempo for this track either.

Classification

Confusion matrix for three distinctive albums

These are two confusion matrices for three distinctive John Mayer albums. Room For Squares is the first album, which also contains the biggest outlier for track popularity. The Search for Everything is the most recent album. And Continuum is somewhere in between and contains three very popular tracks. The truth and prediction of these three albums are being compared here, which means that it is possible to see how well it can be predicted which album is which. With the information of these confusion matrices, it seems that Room For Squares can most easily be predicted by the tested features. This would mean that Room For Squares is the most distinctive of these three albums. What can be noticed as well is that the prediction for Continuum seems the least accurate. With the information of these confusion matrices, it seems that Continuum can be compared most to The Search for Everything.

Top feature selection

This visualisation shows the top features for the three distinctive John Mayer albums. The most noticeable, and therefore most important, features for these albums are acousticness, loudness, the key F, and timbre components 1, 2, 6 and 9. The least important features are danceability, valence, the keys of B, E, G#/Ab, F#/Gb, and timbre components 4, 8 and 12. This means that with the top features (acousticness, loudness, and timbre components 1, 2, 6 and 9), the tracks on these three albums could be recognised and distinguished the easiest.

Confusion matrices for the top features

These confusion matrices are different from the previous two confusion matrices. This is because these confusion matrices include just the top features for these three distinctive John Mayer albums. What can be seen here is that the prediction of Room For Squares has become even more precise. The second thing that can be noticed about these confusion matrices is that the prediction for Continuum also became way more precise compared to the previous confusion matrices. This means that by focusing on these top features, the prediction of the albums will become more precise and more correct. This shows that these features are very important for the distinction between the albums.

Scatterplot top features

This is a scatterplot of three of the top features. The three top features I chose for this scatterplot are acousticness, and timbre components 2 and 9. In this scatterplot, timbre component 9 can be found on the X-axis, acousticness on the Y-axis and timbre component 2 can be seen in the size of the dots. What can be seen in this scatterplot is that Room For Squares seems to be most distinguished from the three chosen John Mayer albums. This result was also noticeable in the confusion matrices. The features acousticness and timbre component 9 seem to have the highest importance for the distinguishment of the album Room For Squares. However, this is different for Continuum and The Search for Everything. The distinguishment for these two albums is a bit more difficult, since the tracks on these albums are much closer to each other for the three top features. However, it is still possible to distinguish the three albums with the top features.

Hierarchical clustering

Two dendrograms of the tracks of the same three John Mayer albums (Room For Squares, Continuum, and The Search for Everything) are showed here. These dendrograms cluster all of the tracks of these three albums. The clustering of these tracks happens with the use of all of the features. The second dendrogram seems as if it is divided into three different clusters. These clusters, however, are not the three different albums. Even though, the albums are not clustered together, I could still see a clear pattern in the clusters of this dendrogram. The middle cluster shows more instrumental songs with more guitar solos and more technical skills, but also mostly with a higher tempo, valence, and/or energy. The right cluster shows more slow, peaceful and sad songs. And the cluster on the left actually shows all the songs which are kind of in between or average for these features.

Conclusion